Genre: Drama – Page 6 – Wimbledon Film Club

Katyn

In this important film, Wajda, at the age of 82, offers in a starkly accessible way the truth of what happened in the Katyn Forest in 1940 when 15,000 to 22,000 Polish officers were rounded up and shot by the Russian KGB. One of the men murdered that day was Jakub Wajda, Andrzej Wajda’s father.…

The Good the Bad the Weird

Set in 1930s Manchuria, three rival Korean adventurers vie with each other for possession of a treasure map promising vast fortune. And that, in fact, is all you need to remember in a plot full of twists and turns, involving many other factions in the chase including local criminal organisations, the Japanese Army and Chinese…

Milk

Milk is one of those rare films that remains entirely gripping even though the audience knows the outcome before they enter the cinema. From the opening scenes of archival footage of police raids of gay bars we know this is going to be a serious and moving film. Penn’s astonishing Oscar-winning, nuanced portrayal of Harvey…

The White Ribbon

Unsettling incidents take place in a small village in north Germany before World War I. The events are characterised by increasing violence and the community wonders about the identity of the perpetrators and their motivation. The village is no different from other communities in the rigid society of the period, nor is its puritanical approach…

The Queen of Spades

In 1806 St Petersburg, Captain Suvorin of the Engineers (Walbrook) becomes resentful of his rich friend, Prince Andrei (Howard), and the circle of Guards officers who gamble their money at faro, a form of snap in which fortunes can be won or lost on the turn of a card. Convinced by an old book that…

35 Shots of Rum

Widowed father Lionel (Descas) lives with his adult daughter Josephine (Diop). He knows that their tranquil, mutually supportive life cannot last, she must find her own way in the world. The stability and comfort of their relationship in a drear Paris suburb is a magnet for family friend Gabrielle (Dogue) and neighbour Noe (Colin). Will…

Katalin Varga

A woman, Katalin, (Hilda Peter), is driven from her home by her husband when he finds out the child they have brought up is not his. Together mother and son travel across Romania by horse and cart, staying in the cheapest accommodation, making their way to the Hungarian-speaking part of the country and finally to…

Bicycle Thieves

This classic neorealist masterpiece brings poetry to a poor family mans struggle to find work in post war Italy. Antonio Ricci is an unemployed man supporting a wife and two children. He is delighted to at last get a good job hanging up posters, but on the sole condition that he has a bicycle which…

Conversations with My Gardener

A disillusioned Parisian artist (Auteuil – Jean de Florette 1987, La Fille Sur Le Pont 2000, Cache 2007) facing divorce, returns to his childhood home in rural France. There he hires his former schoolmate as a gardener (Darroussin – Feux Rouges 2004, Le Pressentiment 2006). What follows is a quintessentially French film consisting of conversations…

Onegin

In early nineteenth century Russia, a young aristocrat, Onegin (Ralph Fiennes), disaffected by life and bored with salons and balls of St Petersburg society, goes to the countryside to take up the estate he has inherited from his uncle. There, through his friend Lensky (Toby Stephens), he meets Tatyana (Liv Tyler). Deeply attracted to the…